I think I have mentioned in another post that the children have all been enjoying the Maddie Moate and Greg Foot Live broadcasts. This week the theme has been Oceans. We have studied oceans recently for the Geography fair so I wanted to do something a little different and thought we might take a look at whales for this week’s mini project.
Whales are a fascinating subject and there’s a lot that can be done for this theme. We only scratched the surface a little on this one as it was only planned as a short topic as we have quite a busy week, but here’s what our Whales project looked like.
Materials & Resources
For this one, we used a couple of whale themed books, watchedd some fab YouTube videos as well as using some resources from Home School Share and Twinkl. I’ve linked to the main items below. Please note the book links are affiliate links (see my disclosure notice here for more info)
- The World of Whales
- 10 Reasons to Love a Whale
- A Book About Whales
- Home School Share Whale lapbook
- Twinkl whale story
The World of Whales book was particularly useful for this project. It’s beautifully created and has a double-page spread on each whale with lots of snippets of information included. There are also pages about migration, research, environment concerns amongst a few other things. It’s wonderfully illustrated and does a really great job of bringing to life the individuality of the different whales.
The Lesson
For this one the children were already pretty engaged ahead of us sitting to look at Whales. As mentioned, we had studied the oceans not too long ago and whales had been a feature then. We started by having a look in the World of Whales book at the different types of whales, baleen and toothed and looked at what the difference was. We then watched some YouTube videos of different whales. Our favourites were:
- National Geographic Blue Whales – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgiPTUy2RqI
- BBC Earth Killer Whales https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj02rnByXBM
- Snorkelling with Belugas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfSqMPufeto
- Close encounters with Beluga Whales https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo3DpWSdo1Q
- Humpback whales https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glxULceEEjA
I left the books out for the children to look as and when they wanted to and the next day we came together to start to put together out lapbooks.
First, we did the sorting exercise of baleen and toothed whales, and I was impressed that they’d remembered which whale was which. We then had a look at how they keep warm in icy waters. There are some great experiments you can do to demonstrate the effect of blubber which we will do once I get the resources I need.
Next, we had a look at some keywords such as pod, echolocation before having a look at the whales which migrate and where they migrate to and from. I then asked the children to choose two whales to write a little more about; nothing too much just some quick facts and they also drew a picture of their chosen whales.
Finally, they did the twinkl newsroom whale story. I like these activities for a quick comprehension. They work well for us and fit well into our topics.
Other Things to Explore
Other things to explore would be to do a more in-depth study about a particular whale and learn about its food chain and migratory patterns.
For older children, a study of whaling and its impact as well as the reasons presented for and against whaling; perhaps get them to write an argument from the perspective of different people.
Study the classification of animals; whales are mammals but why?
Make a paper plate whale.
Consider the use of whales in aquariums and as performance animals; what are the ethics of this? This from twinkl is a good starting point.
